Troubled Blood

Robin raised her eyebrows and turned over the third and last card: the solution. Here again were the two entwined fish, which poured out water into two golden chalices floating on a green lake: it was the same card she’d turned over in Leamington Spa, when she still didn’t know who’d killed Margot Bamborough.

Love… The card also refers to Venus in Cancer. It shows the harmony of the male and the female: interpreted in the largest sense. It is perfect and placid harmony…

Robin took a deep breath, then returned all the cards to their pack and the pack to her bedside drawer. As she stood and picked up her raincoat, the balloon donkey swayed slightly on its ribbon.

Robin could feel the new opal resting in the hollow of the base of her throat as she walked toward the Tube station along the road, and having slept properly for once, and having clean hair, and carrying a feeling of lightness with her that had persisted ever since she took the balloon donkey out of his box, she attracted many pairs of male eyes in the street and on the train. But Robin ignored all of them, heading up the stairs at Oxford Circus, and then proceeded down Regent Street and, finally, to the Shakespeare’s Head where she saw Strike standing outside, wearing a suit.

“Happy birthday,” he said, and after a brief hesitation he bent down and kissed her on the cheek. He smelled, Robin noticed, not only of cigarettes, but of a subtle lavender aftershave, which was unusual.

“Thanks… aren’t we going into the pub?”

“Er—no,” said Strike. “I want to buy you some new perfume.” He pointed toward the rear entrance of Liberty, which lay a mere ten yards away. “It’s your real birthday present—unless you’ve already bought some?” he added. He really hoped not. He couldn’t think of anything else to offer her that didn’t take them back into the realm of awkwardness and possible misunderstanding.

“I… no,” said Robin. “How did you know I’ve…”

“Because I phoned Ilsa, last Christmas…”

As he held open the glass door for her, which led to a chocolate department now full of Hallowe’en treats, Strike explained about his failed attempt to buy Robin perfume, the previous December.

“… so I asked the assistant, but he kept showing me things with names like… I dunno…‘Shaggable You’…”

The laugh Robin failed to repress was so loud that people turned to look at her. They moved past tables stacked with expensive truffles.

“… and I panicked,” Strike admitted, “which is why you ended up with chocolates. Anyway,” he said, as they came to the threshold of the perfume room, with its cupola painted with moon and stars, “you choose whatever you want and I’ll pay.”

“Strike,” said Robin, “this is… this is thoughtful.”

“Yeah, well,” said her partner, with a shrug. “People can change. Or so a psychiatrist in Broadmoor told me. I’m going to stand here,” he said, pointing at a corner where he hoped his bulk wouldn’t impede anyone. “Take your time.”

So Robin spent a pleasurable quarter of an hour browsing among bottles, spraying testers onto strips, enjoying a brief consultation with the helpful assistant, and finally narrowing her choice down to two perfumes. Now she hesitated, wondering whether she dare do what she wanted… but surely, if they were best friends, it was all right?

“OK, there are two I really like,” Robin said, reappearing at Strike’s side. “Give me your opinion. You’ve got to live with it, in the Land Rover.”

“If they’re strong enough to cover up the smell of that car, they aren’t fit for human inhalation,” he said, but nevertheless, he took the two smelling strips.

The first smelled of vanilla, which reminded him of cake, and he liked it. The second put him in mind of warm, musky skin, with a suggestion of bruised flowers.

“That one. The second one.”

“Huh. I thought you’d prefer the first.”

“Because it smells like food?”

She grinned as she sniffed the smelling strips.

“Yes… I think I prefer two, as well. It isn’t cheap.”

“I’ll cope.”

So he carried a heavy cube of white glass which bore the unexceptional name “Narciso” to the desk.

“Yeah, it’s a gift,” Strike said when asked, and he waited patiently as the price sticker was peeled off and a ribbon and wrapping added. He couldn’t personally see the point, but he felt that Robin was owed a little ceremony, and her smile as she took the bag from him told him he’d answered correctly. Now they walked together back through the store and out of the main entrance, where buckets of flowers surrounded them.

“So where—?” asked Robin.

“I’m taking you to the Ritz for champagne,” said Strike.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. It’s why I’m wearing a suit.”

For a moment Robin simply looked at him, then she reached up and hugged him tightly. Surrounded by banked flowers, both remembered the hug they’d shared at the top of the stairs on her wedding day, but this time, Robin turned her face and kissed Strike deliberately on the cheek, lips to stubble.

“Thanks, Strike. This really means a lot.”

And that, thought her partner, as the two of them headed away toward the Ritz in the golden glow of the early evening, really was well worth sixty quid and a bit of an effort…

Out of his subconscious rose the names Mazankov and Krupov, and it was a second or two before he remembered where he’d heard them, why they sounded Cornish, and why he thought of them now. The corners of his mouth twitched, but as Robin didn’t see him smiling, he felt no compulsion to explain.